The AHL’s development process does not always deliver its lessons kindly.

Sometimes they cost a team a Calder Cup Playoff game.

On a frustrating Wednesday night for the Toronto Marlies in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, those lessons and the ending to their evening proved to be particularly aggrieving. They had already surrendered their 2-0 first-period lead. Three Penguins goals in the middle period had put them Marlies behind. But they had rallied in the third period, crashing the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton net, putting goaltender Sergei Murashov under barrage, and tying the game on a Luke Haymes goal with 6:55 to go in regulation.

With it a 3-3 game, however, the Marlies endured some additional pain. Murashov stopped Marlies forward Easton Cowan’s partial breakaway moments later. Two minutes after that, Marlies defenseman Dakota Mermis retrieved a puck behind his net and delivered a crisp pass directly to Cowan on the high left boards. Cowan tried to direct a pass to defenseman Wiliam Villeneuve but instead sent it to pressuring Penguins forward Rutger McGroarty, who read the play perfectly. Villeneuve, seeing the interception unfold in front of him, scrambled, but McGroarty got behind him before tucking a shot past Artur Akhtyamov with 2:59 to go.

Down 4-3, Toronto pressured the Penguins until the end, but the visitors held on. After the Marlies had taken back-to-back road victories to open the series, it is now a 2-2 series. And now the Penguins have a chance to sweep their three-game stay in Toronto going into Friday’s Game 5 at Coca-Coliseum.

Wednesday’s loss also ensured that the Marlies will need to return to Mohegan Sun Arena at Casey Plaza for at least Game 6 on Sunday.

Pick something aggravating, anything, from Wednesday night’s loss for the Marlies:
--They gave up a two-goal lead in a playoff game. At home.
--They scored twice on the power play yet still lost.
--They battled back to tie the game late only to see it disappear on one giveaway.

And it was a frustrating return to the line-up for the 21-year-old Cowan, who had missed Games 2 and 3. He is with the Marlies after spending most of the season with the parent Toronto Maple Leafs. After going 11-18-29 in 66 games as an NHL rookie, the Leafs opted to send him to the Marlies for playoff experience.

Surely a first-round pick like Cowan who had just been through a full NHL season should dominate at the AHL level. Right? Not really. The AHL is different. It’s more scrambly. Less predictable, certainly. The timing can differ by a split-second. How reads unfold vary. While it’s less of an issue in the postseason because line-ups are more consistent, the elements of youth and inexperience hold more weight. More than a few players with years of NHL experience and achievements have struggled when they went to the AHL.

Cowan has gone 5-5-10 through 15 playoff games. Solid numbers, undoubtedly, though hardly dominant.

To his credit, Cowan owned the mistake afterward. Learning how to process a bad play, a tough loss, is part of the development process as well.

“I’ve got to be better,” Cowan told the Toronto media afterward. “It starts with me. I cost my team the game. I’ve got to be better, and I will be Friday.”

A lot of good work can disappear with one slip in the Calder Cup Playoffs. In the regular season, solace can at least be found that mistakes will lead to growth later. The Calder Cup Playoffs offer far less forgiveness.  John Gruden, Cowan’s head coach, saw the situation pragmatically.

“Our guys, they do a lot of good,” Gruden put it. “It's just we have to eliminate the catastrophic, and if we do that, we'll take this series back over, and I and I think they know that. I don't sit there and need to tell them all the time over [and over].

“It’s playoff hockey, and we have to understand turning the puck over isn't going to work against a team that good.” 

Cowan’s coach also had his back.

“He's a gamer,” Gruden said of his young forward. “I'm sure he'd like to have it back, too, and so would all of us, but that's not going to define who he is as a person and not going to define who he is as a Toronto Maple Leaf.

“He's going to go back out there and be Easton Cowan, the best version of him, and forget about it. Find it, fix it, forget it, [because], hey, everyone makes mistakes at the end of the day, and he's a teammate of ours. He's a great young player and a great kid, so he'll bounce back.”

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